The Archives of American Art received $5 million to digitize material about underrepresented artists.

Carlos Loarca and Rupert García in Balmy Alley, San Francisco, viewing works from an extension of the Galería de la Raza exhibition “Rivera, Orozco, Siquieros: Original Drawings and Prints.” Photographer unknown. Tomás Ybarra-Frausto research material on Chicano art. CourArchives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, which is winding down its activities before closing outright, announced a $5-million gift to the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art this week that will help it process and digitize materials about historically underrepresented artists. The gift will enable the Archives to make documents related to Native American, Asian American, Latino, African American, and female artists that it already possesses more widely available.

The Archives of American Art has been committed to diversity in its collections since our early years, beginning with the acquisition of Horace Pippin’s illustrated World War I memoir in 1958,. Since then, we have worked to build strength in collections focused on historically underrepresented art and artists and to make these collections available to a worldwide audience, but we need to do more. This extraordinary gift reinforces our work to add to our existing collections on underrepresented artists and enables us to share an ever more inclusive story of American art globally.